Information about developments at snowballing problem

[Dabos37]

Getting extra speed buff on defeat would be nice.
But consider that it may actually weaken defeat faction as they will not get free troops from respawn.

uhmmm, do you think so? I mean, just think about the usual scenario:

1- NE or SE lord creates an 500-600 army, and then he thinks that it is a great idea to attack Usuk or Ezenur Castle (to make this scenario even worse, this is happening at the same time Monchung is besieging Amprela with 1200 men xD).
2- Another 700 men Khuzaits army come to break the siege. Plus some single parties are close waiting for a good opportunity.
3- NE or SE army gets totally wiped like idiots, trying to do something which was pretty clear that was an aweful idea.
4- Khuzait army gets tons of money, full loot, full prisoners, etc.

Now think about this:


1- NE or SE lord creates an 500-600 army, and then he thinks that it is a great idea to attack Usuk or Ezenur Castle.
2- An 700 Khuzaits army come to break the siege. Plus some single parties are close waiting for a good opportunity.
3- 500-600 army has to fight against 900 Khuzaits (700 men army, plus some single parties), the battle is impossible to win, so after losing some few men, the NE/SE army decided to flee and automatically disband.
4- Maybe 1 or 2 NE/SE get chased and captured, while all other parties are able to escape.
5- Khuzait army just get 1/3 of total possible money as much.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Yeah but they escape with how many men?
How fast they decide to run?
Will these mean that there is never deciding battle?
That would help offenders probably even more because in battle they would lose troops and maybe because of loses they would be not able to successfully siege. When defeated defender would respawn with free troops and could mount counterattack.
But in your case offensive army will just take the city when defenders do nothing(if they are weaker). No battle mean no losses for offender and no free troops for defender. It just don't make sense for weaker side to preserve their troops. Just bleed enemy with constant free troops stream.
The whole system with free troops, recruitment, current model is just bad. For gameplay more than for 'balancing'.

 

[Dabos37]

Yeah but they escape with how many men?
How fast they decide to run?
Will these mean that there is never deciding battle?
That would help offenders probably even more because in battle they would lose troops and maybe because of loses they would be not able to successfully siege. When defeated defender would respawn with free troops and could mount counterattack.
But in your case offensive army will just take the city when defenders do nothing(if they are weaker). No battle mean no losses for offender and no free troops for defender. It just don't make sense for weaker side to preserve their troops. Just bleed enemy with constant free troops stream.
The whole system with free troops, recruitment, current model is just bad. For gameplay more than for 'balancing'.

Are you aware of the low death ratio for winner side (even after the last patch). Just check a 700 vs 900 battle and check how much men get killed and how much of them get wounded (and heal back in some few days).

Flee is currently a thing in the game, but what currently happens is that an army tries to flee but then get chased by single enemy parties + army, and armies always get tackled and completely wiped (the only armies I have seen able to scape, are Khuzaits armies).

Should armies trying to flee always happen? Of course not (it should happen more often than it is happening currently though). Armies getting completely wiped should still be a thing but not 99% guaranteed like it is now. Just check how battles actually were at that time, an army getting completely wiped was really really weird, and same happens in games like CK3.

 

[Ferisko]

@Blood Gryphon Today I made a test that I'll update later (didn't have time) and I had similar results that @Apocal

I just came home.
I forgot to save after the test, it was an auto-save, so at noon break from work I f****d up the test by playing an hour... (I was anxious cause I didn,'t play last patch) so I'll do another one.

 

[Sarissofoi]

So what is solution?
To make troops heal only in city/castles?
Actually...
Troops should heal, in camps, therefore forcing you to stop and set up camp, and in villages, towns and castles. That would actually slow down game but would also annoy player with no fief.

 

[ElCrisp]

I agree there is a problem in how catastrophic defeat is for the losing side. With the winner often barely being scratched. It strikes me that the whole moral and fleeing system was meant to be something more. Like what is the effect of units fleeing in simmulation other than that being their effective death? They never rally and return to the fight as far as im aware.
Beyond that on the campaign map they are sitting ducks to the same party that was fast enough to catch them in the first place as speed is a binary of are you fast enough.

Retreating units could gain some sort of movement bonus on the map so long as their target doesnt change to engaging a party, as others have suggested.
I also think units that route in battle could be in a category outside of wounded, where perhaps the party has to pay some portion of the units upgrade cost to redeploy them (to re-outfit the troops for the weapons and such they dropped that might slow them down while running for their lives) and this could be a bigger componant of "casualties" from a battle.

As battles historically are not all death and injury, and this also makes sense from a game balance perspective

 

[Apocal]

If anyone interested I could test some games with Party templates changed(reduced in size).
Would this be helpful?

Yeah, but make sure you label it, so people don't confuse a modded test run for vanilla.

Mexxico, we wish you good luck in figuring out what's directly causing all these snowballs to form.

Stronger factions get stronger. Weaker factions get weaker. It builds slowly, and from very little, like a snowball but it is the long-term effect of too many deterministic outcomes in a game.

 

[ElCrisp]

Another thing that was bugging me.
I know that there are already changes in the pipe as far as war calaculations and seeing fiefs as more than just their prosperity and that should help.

Regardles it strikes me that factions make an assesment and see other factions with excess land relative to their number of clans as a somewhat jucier target. Simmultaneously clans that are likely to defect are enticed by a faction with a large amount of land relative to its number of clans. So at what point or under which condtions do these lines intersect.

I know some work was put in to try and stop clans defecting to the same faction to which they lost ther own fief but I dont no the details, does this persist after war?

You could possibly have a situation were for example

faction A dominates b, while faction C dominates d.
So while b isnt likely to defect to A.
b will defect to C and likewise d will defect to A

Meaning faction A and B still gain clans and snowball harder even if it wasn't from their direct competitor.

I will do some 20 year tests and note clan defections as @Blood Gryphon suggested.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Another thing that was bugging me.
I know that there are already changes in the pipe as far as war calaculations and seeing fiefs as more than just their prosperity and that should help.

Regardles it strikes me that factions make an assesment and see other factions with excess land relative to their number of clans as a somewhat jucier target. Simmultaneously clans that are likely to defect are enticed by a faction with a large amount of land relative to its number of clans. So at what point or under which condtions do these lines intersect.

I know some work was put in to try and stop clans defecting to the same faction to which they lost ther own fief but I dont no the details, does this persist after war?

You could possibly have a situation were for example

faction A dominates b, while faction C dominates d.
So while b isnt likely to defect to A.
b will defect to C and likewise d will defect to A

Meaning faction A and B still gain clans and snowball harder even if it wasn't from their direct competitor.

I will do some 20 year tests and note clan defections as @Blood Gryphon suggested.

Yep you got it, I normally see loser of Vlandia/battania join khuzait and empire join winner of Battania/vlandia.

 

[Dabos37]

I have being analyzing a new test and I am not completely sure about the main issue is related to defections. What I am seeing is that once a kingdom is stronger than another one, the weakest kingdom starts a spiral of death where it loses battle after battle continuously. I have seen Vlandia getting wrecked with 10-11 clans and keeping almost all initial clans.

Having Vlandia or Battania dominating the west, but one of them always getting totally defeated, makes pretty clear that it is not an issue related with factions strengths/weakness but random events about which faction starts winning battles and getting more money and influence since the beginning.

All of this makes me think that maybe battles are currently too rewarding for the winner side and something should be done in order to balance this. Some things which come to my mind:

- Makes the AI to focus only on defense if losing a war. It is pretty common to see the weakest side forming suicidal armies to try to siege enemy settlements, and getting defeated most of the time.
- Ensure that armies do not get totally wiped after defeats, so the winner side do not get so much money and influence, while the losing side is able to get back to the fight faster.
- Make battles less rewarding in terms of influence and money, but this would also affect the player.

 

[Ferisko]

1.57	Test 20 years
Aserai	24
Battania	16
Khuzait	48
Northern	9
Southern	6
Western	16
Sturgia	28
Vlandia	26

Spoiler

 

[Dabos37]

I think I know another reason because snowballing is maybe a bit worse now, and it is related to troops XP gain for the AI. Now loosing an army is more impactful because lords have to wait more time until having high tier units.

I think that the nerf for troops XP was necessary and it is much better now, but losing battles is now probably much more impactful.

 

[sniparsexe]

I think I know another reason because snowballing is maybe a bit worse now, and it is related to troops XP gain for the AI. Now loosing an army is more impactful because lords have to wait more time until having high tier units.

I think that the nerf for troops XP was necessary and it is much better now, but losing battles is now probably much more impactful.

yeah + when you combine this with longer wars I can easily understand how snowballing is worse.

 

[mexxico]

Here all test results since 1.5.4 updated with 16 x 1.5.7 results

Spoiler: 1.5.4, 1.5.5, 1.5.6, 1.5.7 Test results

Actually 1.5.6 and 1.5.7 results are nearly same 60.4 vs 64.8, maybe if we continue collecting 3-4 samples they can be even equal.

So improvements done in 1.5.7 seems effected less while some other developments like longer wars and xp limit changes can be neutralized developments. Its interesting Khuzaits have both 46 average score. Probably this can be related to luck, normally 1.5.7 Khuzait average should be less. Actually there were no big developments in 1.5.7 (even a small number change maybe most positive effected can be reducing cavalry ratio speed bonus to 40%) so it can be normal having similar results with 1.5.6. After that finding something reduces snowball score much will be harder. We can do this of course with small additions like having more militia at settlements or less hostile actions / less wars or adding cheat money to poor clans so they will defect less but gameplay can be effected badly and I have no control over troop trees for suggestions at there. Probably I cannot change these and I do not think they can have major effect.

 

[Ferisko]

On thing I noticed is that defections are random, once khuzait get his hands into an imperial clan they will suffer almost no rebellions (rebellions help a lot to weaker factions).
What if a clan can't defect to the faction who take away his initial settlement?
For example, the initial owner of danustica lost it to khuzait and ended up owning amprela for khuzaits, why would he fight for the kingdom that took his rightful land? Maybe he could defect to other empires, sturgia or aserai to try to gain his original settlement back.
This way clans won't go serve their enemies, of course this would reset for every defection (in this case if the clan went to WE and defected again, he would be able to join khuzait, but not directly/initially)

 

[mexxico]

On thing I noticed is that defections are random, once khuzait get his hands into an imperial clan they will suffer almost no rebellions (rebellions help a lot to weaker factions).
What if a clan can't defect to the faction who take away his initial settlement?
For example, the initial owner of danustica lost it to khuzait and ended up owning amprela for khuzaits, why would he fight for the kingdom that took his rightful land? Maybe he could defect to other empires, sturgia or aserai to try to gain his original settlement back.
This way clans won't go serve their enemies, of course this would reset for every defection (in this case if the clan went to WE and defected again, he would be able to join khuzait, but not directly/initially)

Actually when a clan siege or raid or capture settlements of another clan they lose relation, especially during capture owner clan also lose relation with enemy king too. So it will be hard for that clan to defect to kingdom which captured their settlements previously. So if Khuzait captured N.Empire settlements, N.Empire clans are more likely to defect to other kingdoms when they left without money and fief. This was one of 1.5.6 snowball fix developments.

 

[Ferisko]

Thanks for the explanation mexxico

 

[Dabos37]

Actually when a clan siege or raid or capture settlements of another clan they lose relation, especially during capture owner clan also lose relation with enemy king too. So it will be hard for that clan to defect to kingdom which captured their settlements previously. So if Khuzait captured N.Empire settlements, N.Empire clans are more likely to defect to other kingdoms when they left without money and fief. This was one of 1.5.6 snowball fix developments.

Thanks Mexxico. And what do you think about making defeated armies to have a better chance for escape instead of getting completely wiped? I think that this is something which could be done without much problems and test if works fine.

Not 100% sure that this would fix anything without bringing new issues, but I think worths to test. It is just about increasing the flee chance for armies losing a battle and disband the army after flee for give a higher chance to single parties to escape. This looks pretty simple to do but not sure because I am not good with code.

 

[Flesson19]

Virtually all tests are showing same thing, the Empire kingdoms mostly die out, Battania and Vlandia beat up on each other, Aserai and Khuzuit take whey the can from the empire, Sturgia holding their own better but still not enough. Every test is showing nearly what i describe, I will get you another test or two tonight @mexxico after caravan and beta branch videos done.

 

[Dabos37]

on a side note, reducing war declaration chance to happen less often would also be pretty welcome. I am even in favor of some long peace times (50 days or so), but maybe some players could complain about this.

I would reduce the chance por decision trigger and not the clans war support, so in this way the player would be still able to declare new wars whenever he wants.